Sunday, 10 March 2013

UK aid and and modern imperialism in Africa

Transcript (with selected links) and slides with references...

(Note that this video originated as an article for the Huffington Post called 'UK Aid, Imperialism and Child Mortality' [here].)

·Hi

·In this video, I will be looking at aspects of UK aid to Africa that
seem carefully designed to help control and exploit the region, whilst acting
as a subsidy from UK taxpayers to corporations, with the impacts upon the poor being
largely irrelevant. That is, I will be looking at evidence that aid is being
used as a tool of modern imperialism.

·So let’s start.

·Firstly, UK aid to Africa is used to promote discredited pro-foreign
investor, anti-poor, anti-growth programs designed by the World Bank and IMF. This
is done in two ways. Firstly, much UK aid still goes directly through the World
Bank and IMF. Secondly, direct government-to- government aid remains
conditional upon Bank-IMF programs being followed. Under the programs the
world’s poorest countries are barred from using the same strategies that
today’s rich countries used to develop including trade and capital controls.

·This aid conditionality has previously been condemned by UK poverty
activists. For example, in 2005 Make Poverty Historywroteto Tony Blair that the
conditions attached to aid are undemocratic and ‘often work to entrench rather
than overcome poverty.’ In 2006, Christian Aidstatedthat by providing aid through the
World Bank the UK government was ‘paying for poverty’. Such criticism forced
the government to claim that it would change direction. However, several
analysts including theUK Aid Networkhave pointed out that
little real change has materialised.

·Moving on, the UK government is also using aid to promote increased
corporate control of African food systems with a range of harmful impacts upon
the poor. For example, the Department for International Development’s Food
Retail Industry Challenge Fund is aimed at promoting export commodity
production by African smallholders for sale to UK supermarkets, instead of food
production for local needs. In this way, countries such as Kenya export large
amounts of food crops whilst many in the country starve.

·The Department for International Development also funds theAfrica Enterprise
Challenge Fund, which makes grants of between US$250,000 and US$1.5
million for investments in Africa, primarily to large scale agribusiness
companies. The support for their land deals comes at a time when Oxfamreportsthat large firms are
increasingly taking over productive land and water at the expense of African
peasants.

·It seems the UK government is also attempting to use aid to control poverty
groups in Africa. For example,observers in Rwanda report that Western aid provided
to local NGOs, often first going through Western charities, works to divert
them from political advocacy and promoting social reform. Instead, anti-poverty
groups are funded to focus only on technical project work - such as digging
wells - while ignoring underlying socio-economic problems. The thinking of the
UK government seems clear: national economic policies in poor countries are supposed
to be designed by donor governments in collaboration with compliant local
elites. The poor should stay out of the way and concentrate on coping
strategies.

·Before ending this video, I would like to mention Teresa Hayter’s 1971
book, ‘Aid as Imperialism’. In the book she expressed doubt that major donor
governments could be convinced to fundamentally reform aid and stop using it as
a tool of control. She believed that concerned citizens in donor countries had
a choice between: (1) accepting aid in its current form, (2) opposing aid
altogether, or (3) promoting socialism within donor countries so that aid could
be provided in a genuine spirit of solidarity.

·Viewers are invited to discuss her assessment and their general views on
aid, in the comments below.

·Thanks for listening

·See you soon

References can be seen more clearly by clicking on the slides, whereby the slides will expand...